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April 11, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
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NEFARIOUS Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep555
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Coming up, I'll look at the expulsion of a couple of Democrats by the Tennessee GOP as a classic exhibition of what Republicans do right and wrong.
I'll outline Ron DeSantis' next steps in his continuing effort to teach Disney a lesson.
Actor Sean Patrick Flannery joins me in studio.
He plays the lead in the supernatural thriller, Nefarious.
We're going to talk about the theological, political, and artistic elements in this film.
By the way, if you're listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, make sure to hit the subscribe button.
Same if you're watching on Rumble.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
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I'd like to talk about what happened in the Tennessee legislature with the expulsion of a couple of Democrats who had led a protest of gun activists and trans activists who really stormed Let's remember that this happens right after Audrey Hale,
a transgender domestic terrorist, shoots up basically a Christian school, killing kids, killing an administrator, killing the principal or a Or I guess it was the principal of the school, the headmaster of the school.
So this was a horrific incident and revealed transgender domestic terrorism.
But somehow for the left, this was all about the gun.
So for the left, when the shooter is a white supremacist, it's all about the shooter.
But whenever the shooter is a Democrat or a leftist, it's all about the gun.
Let's remember that even after the incident in Tennessee, there's a new shooting in Louisville, Kentucky.
And the shooter was apparently some guy who was fired at a bank, fired from a bank.
But this guy's a liberal.
He puts his pronouns, he, him, on his profile.
It turns out there's now social media posts that he was putting out on LinkedIn and other places where he was attacking Trump.
So, by and large, I mean, I think when you look at these shootings, there are certain common elements that emerge.
You typically, the shooter's typically a leftist or a Democrat.
They're often an atheist or transgender or LGBTQ or some combination of those.
In any event, coming back to Tennessee, the Republican legislature decides that since three prominent Democrats were leading the charge to occupy the Capitol, think of the echoes to January 6th.
All right, let's expel them.
But instead of expelling all three of them, the Republican legislature gets together and they expel two and they don't expel one.
They don't expel the woman and they expel two men.
They expel Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, but they don't expel Gloria Johnson.
Now, this starts to look bad from the outset.
Why? Because Gloria Johnson is white and the two men are black.
Now, Again, this is how Republicans are.
They're like, well, there's some important distinctions to be made.
The white woman did not participate as actively as the other two guys.
And moreover, she expressed some regrets and apologies for what she had done.
But the left is going to say, this just shows how racist the Republican legislature is.
And not to mention the woman who was retained, by the way, retained by one vote, goes on TV and she's asked, well, why were you retained while the other two guys were kicked out?
And she goes, well, obviously it had to do with skin color.
My skin color is white.
So this is what you get, Republicans, when you try to make these nuances and say that we're not going to go all the way and kick them all.
You should have gone all the way and thrown them all out.
Now, the left, of course, would be in a major uproar and they go, this is horrible.
This is an attack on democracy.
How exactly is it an attack on democracy?
Let's start with, isn't the Tennessee legislature democratically elected in a red state?
They've got a majority.
In fact, I believe they have a supermajority.
And so they are democratically deciding that this behavior is out of line.
It violates the rules and it does violate the rules.
Now, they get to set the penalty.
Same as when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, if you violated the House rules, which, by the way, she made, she got to set the penalty.
And she did set the penalty, and she essentially made the rules and forced the Republicans to abide by those rules.
That is what democracy means.
In a democratic society, legislatures have the authority to set their own procedures, make their own rules, and then punish members who don't Follow those rules.
That is not in any way anti-democratic.
But because it was handled so poorly, it created a political opportunity and a media opportunity for the left.
And so far from conceding that this was an insurrection, obstruction of a proceeding, parading in a public building.
By the way, all charges that have been deployed in January 6th Instead, the left goes, this is an attack on democracy.
And sure enough, the Nashville City Council gets together and restores one of the two guys who was kicked off.
I believe it's Justin Jones.
And they do so on the basis that we are Appointing him to fill the interim seat that was vacated because Justin Jones was kicked off.
Now, see, I think right here there is an opportunity for the Republicans to go.
That's not going to work because this is not an open seat that's created automatically by someone stepping down and you're appointing somebody else to fill that seat.
You are appointing the very person that we expelled.
So, sorry, since we make the rules around here, we're not going to be ceding Mr.
Justin Jones. See, Republicans tend to get intimidated by this kind of stuff, and they go, okay, well, we made our statement, and now that they've put him back, we're going to have to readmit him.
No, you don't have to readmit him.
You're in charge. You've got to realize that you're in a fight here with the left, and if you're going to take these kinds of actions, you've got to have the follow-through.
Use your power, use your influence, and don't back down.
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I've been talking about the fact that Republicans need to start acting like they are in a fight.
This is not to say the left is not going to push back.
They are. They're going to push back and we have to push back against them.
Now, one guy who actually understands this and knows how to fight is Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida.
And a case exhibit here is his fight with Disney.
Now, To update you on the story, Ron DeSantis, through the legislature, took away a bunch of Disney's special protections and provisions and established a new oversight board to make the rules governing how Disney relates to the state of Florida.
But, unknown to Ron DeSantis, the old board, which was, by the way, pretty much established with the collusion of Disney, was kind of a Disney-controlled board, Disney signed a secret agreement with that board, a 30-year agreement, a kind of binding agreement, and Disney basically goes, ha ha ha, you You have a new board, but the new board has no power.
Guess why? Because the old boards worked with us in crafting this agreement that essentially immunizes us against anything that you want to do.
Basically, we now control not only the parks, but the roads that lead up to the parks, the tax district that Disney inhabits and so on.
Now, again, a weak Republican would have been like, oh, wow, they really got me.
There's nothing I can do about it.
Well, at least I tried.
I made an effort, guys.
No. So Ron DeSantis is like, listen, this is not going to work.
If you think that a private corporation, Disney, can defeat the people of the state of Florida operating democratically through the state legislature, you are sorely mistaken.
And Ron DeSantis says, look, I'm now quoting him, Come hell or high water, we're going to make sure the policy of Florida carries the day.
Ultimately, we are going to win on every single issue involving Disney.
I can tell you that they are not superior to the people of Florida.
So this is, again, a governor who knows, I have power, I need to use it.
So, DeSantis goes, number one, we're going to pass some new laws that make it really clear who's in charge.
We're going to take this existing contract that was surreptitiously signed to court and challenge it.
Number three, we're going to levy new tolls and taxes on Disney and more taxes on the Disney hotels.
So, if Disney thinks that somehow they pulled a fast one, they can defeat the governor, they can defeat the state of Florida, No.
We'll see how binding this surreptitious agreement is.
Very often, if an agreement has been carried out in this way, it's subverting a legislature.
A court is going to look at it and say, no, listen, it's the legislature that makes the rules.
You can't... It would be like saying that an outgoing Supreme Court, because there are new members coming into the court, decides, let's make laws for the whole country for the next 100 years, and let's declare that these laws cannot be changed by anybody else.
They're, in effect, constitutional interpretations written in stone nonsense.
A new court can come in and go, listen, we interpret the Constitution a different way.
We're going by the same votes that you did, except the outcome is going to be different.
Sorry, Roe versus Wade is not going to be the law of the land anymore, no matter what you think.
So, Disney had better watch out because, again, I'm not quoting DeSantis, they're acting like somehow they pulled one over on the state.
Suffice to say, you know, the legislature is going to void anything that Disney did on the way out the door.
So in other words, on the way out the door, Disney kind of corralled the old board and go, listen guys, let's make a deal.
Let's kind of cut out the new guys so they won't be able to do anything.
That's really what Disney is all about.
And so Disney has good lawyers.
And Disney has been a kind of...
I wouldn't say, I mean, an elephant, I suppose you could say, in the state of Florida.
It's probably the most powerful corporation in the state of Florida.
And so they think, okay, well, listen, one more powerful than the governor.
We run the state. But they don't run the state.
And they finally have a governor who is not going to put up with this kind of nonsense.
So Disney picked the wrong fight with the wrong guy.
The fight, by the way, precedes the current leadership of Disney.
It involves the company's former CEO, Bob Chappik, when he came out basically against Disney's law, that was a law against teaching very young children about sexual orientation, LGBTQ propaganda, trans indoctrination. And Disney acted like the state of Florida was sort of outlawing homosexuality or acting in a fascist manner and declared itself as a corporation
in a public stance against the governor and in a sense against the people of Florida, because who makes laws? The people make laws through their elected representatives.
So this is a very interesting fight, and it's very important for Ron DeSantis not to give in, not to back down.
So far, the good signs are that he's not doing that.
He recognizes that he's in a fight, but it's a fight that he is more than ready for.
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I am continuing my discussion of the controversy at Stanford involving free speech.
You remember this controversy was kindled by a judge, a district judge.
Judge Duncan, Kyle Duncan, who came to speak at Stanford and was completely shut down by howling and screaming activists.
An administrator was called in who sided with the activists.
Happily, that administrator is now placed on leave.
The Stanford Dean has affirmed Stanford's commitment to free speech, but, and it's a very big but, no disciplinary action at all taken against any of the protesters, which gives them this sense of immunity, of entitlement, of obviously feeling that they can and will do it again.
In fact, they sort of did do it again when the Dean, Jenny Martinez, stopped into her constitutional law class. There was basically a protest in her class.
Her blackboard was completely covered with activist slogans and paraphernalia, and the students basically said that they were complaining that she was siding with free speech over the protesters.
Now, in the most recent escalation, a very good escalation, U.S. Circuit Court Judge James Ho, Asian-American guy, has taken the lead.
He's followed by another judge, another circuit court judge, Elizabeth Branch.
And he goes, guess what? I'm not going to be hiring any clerks from Stanford Law School.
Don't even bother to apply.
And then Judge Branch has said, I'm not going to do the same.
And there's a whole bunch of other judges who are in sympathy with these guys who haven't made any public announcements, but guess what?
They might have decided, I won't say anything, but I'm not going to do that either.
Now, this is the judiciary protecting itself.
Because let's remember, these judges are close.
They're part of the same sort of fraternity.
And so if you're going to ban a judge from speaking at a law school, what does that say about what the law school is?
It's a joke. It's not even really a law school because what are law schools, if not forums, for legal argument, legal discussion, legal back and forth?
Remember, our whole legal system is based on the adversary system of people on two sides making competing claims.
Every time the Supreme Court has an issue before it, it has two opposite sides arguing.
They each get 30 minutes.
So this is our whole system.
This is how it works. And yet what Stanford Law School activists are trying to do is shut down the system.
In a sense, destroy the rule of law.
And so the judges, and Judge Ho in particular, knows what is at stake.
He knows that Stanford has kind of backed down.
They've asserted a commitment to free speech.
But his point is, that's not enough.
And he gave a speech about this, Judge Ho did.
And I just want to read a few sentences because they're very telling.
He says, first of all, He goes, he makes the point that it's no accident that the worst free speech violations occur on law schools where there is no intellectual diversity.
In other words, if the law school had a bunch of conservatives and Republicans and patriots and Christians, they'd be like, are you people crazy?
We're not going to participate in this, or we're going to organize a counter-protest.
But it's only because these schools are so lopsided.
They're full of leftists and black activists and Chicano activists and gay activists.
And this is the whole body of the law school.
So they're able to mobilize, in many cases, a majority of people on their behalf or on their side.
Here's Judge Ho talking.
What some law schools tolerate and even encourage today is not intellectual exploration, but intellectual terrorism.
Students don't try to engage and learn from one another.
They engage in disruption, intimidation, public shaming.
They try to terrorize people into submission and self-censorship in a deliberate campaign to eradicate certain viewpoints.
And then he goes on to give a practical example, very simple one.
He goes, I go back to my alma mater, the University of Chicago.
He says, a few years ago, the law school had an event featuring a professor who favored laws boycotting the state of Israel.
He says, before the event, the law school reminded students of its free speech policy.
But one student thought he had a loophole, and instead of disrupting the event itself, he recruited a bunch of his friends to go disrupt the event.
You do it, not me. That way they can't punish you.
They can't punish me.
He goes, well, my law school, this is Judge Ho talking, was not impressed.
Chicago suspended the law school student for the rest of the year and told him that he'd have to reapply for admission if he ever wanted to come back.
And basically, Judge Ho is saying actions must have consequences.
And Nowhere is this more true.
Our whole legal system is based on that.
You do something wrong, you break the law, actions of consequences.
You're going to be held accountable for breaking the law.
And if you don't teach these lessons in law school, when are they going to be taught?
So his point is, let's see Stanford give us not talk, but action, and then maybe I'll reconsider and hire some clerks from Stanford Law School.
Friends, I want to tell you about a new film, Nefarious, hitting theaters on April 14th, and you simply got to see this one.
Debbie and I had the privilege of watching it.
It's captivating, it's suspenseful, it's beautiful in a haunting way.
It's also profound, I guess I'd call it a supernatural thriller.
It stars Sean Patrick Flannery, who I'm going to have in studio right here coming up.
And Jordan Belfi, the film is beautifully acted, keeps you on the edge of your seat.
It was written and directed by Carrie Solomon and Chuck Conzelman, who also did God's Not Dead and Unplanned.
I'm sure many of you saw those movies.
The plot involves a psychiatrist who must pronounce a murderer sane before he can be executed.
The problem? The murderer insists he's innocent.
He claims to be possessed by a demon.
In effect, the demon did it, not me.
The movie takes off from there.
It never lets up until its shattering climax.
This is a film unlike any you've seen before.
It will leave you moved and speechless.
Buy tickets today at whoisnefarious.com, whoisnefarious.com.
The Movies and Theater is April 14th.
Guys, I'm really thrilled.
Today on the podcast, we have a guest and a great guest in studio, Sean Patrick Flannery, a Hollywood actor.
He's an American actor born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, was raised outside of Houston, Texas.
He's appeared in over 100 movies and TV shows, Powder, Suicide Kings, The Boondock Saints, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Criminal Minds, The Dead Zone, Dexter, and so on.
He also owns and operates a martial arts academy.
Hollywood Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
And we're here to talk about a new film coming out this week, April 14th, called Nefarious.
Sean Patrick, welcome to the podcast.
Great to have you. Thanks for having me.
And let's talk a little bit about Hollywood first.
You're a Texas kid who went to Hollywood.
What got you there? Well, I went to the University of St.
Thomas and I was studying business with folks on law and I saw the most beautiful girl I've ever seen at the time leaving a building.
And I did what any red-blooded Texan does.
He goes to the school administration office and he drops an English class to sign up for whatever they're teaching in that building.
And that's a true story.
And in the building was the theater department.
And so I fell in love with acting and I wrote a piece of children's theater and I decided after school I was going to drive out to LA and I was going to try and produce that play.
And then an agent said, could I submit you on some commercials?
And I said, yeah, if it supplements my writing career.
Then I got a handful of those.
And she goes, let me submit you on some theatrical, which means TV and movie.
And I said, absolutely, if it supplements my writing career.
Next thing I know, I was on a plane to go do Young Indiana Jones.
The acting kind of took over.
But it all started because I followed a girl, which almost everything in my life is...
A surprising amount of human activity can be put down to that simple idea.
It started with Adam and Eve.
I know. I followed a girl.
I'm going here and I'm like... Next moment, he's eating the apple.
Yes, yes. Uh-oh.
So, but interestingly, so you went out thinking you would be more of a writer-producer, but then you found yourself...
Which often happens. I mean, you have guys, I think of an old friend of mine, Ben Stein, whom I actually met through his dad, who was a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
And Ben Stein went out to Hollywood to be a screenwriter.
He found himself cast in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Classic role. Well, the role suited his personality so perfectly.
And I guess Hollywood is looking for a certain look and a certain type To fit the screen, the roles, right?
You know, I think so.
Realistically, you know, not to sound arrogant, but I thought I was a good actor because I was doing theater at University of St.
Thomas, but I just didn't feel like it was a probability.
You know, the subjective nature of eight people sitting in a chair going, well, I like him, but I really want to cast my nephew.
And another person going, well, I mean, I always thought it should be a blonde-haired guy or...
You know, but writing was objective.
I knew I could write and I knew I could wait tables, save up my own money, rent the Encino Theater out and produce it on my own.
I could see that route happening.
But having... To be selected, I always use the analogy of, if I was going to go to the Olympics, I'd rather be Usain Bolt than, say, Greg Louganis.
You know, both are champions in their own right, but one's judged by a panel of eight, and another one, you either break that tape or you don't.
It's very meritocratic.
There is nothing subjective about it.
But, lo and behold, I was wrong.
I mean, becoming an actor was kind of viable if you are good and you're in LA, and you're a decent, nice person, easy to work with.
You went to Hollywood in the mid-80s, I understand it.
And have you noticed Hollywood change, not just in its politics, but in the kind of movies it makes?
Because if I think back to the 80s and 90s, it was an era in which a lot of memorable movies were made.
I mean, in comedy, I think of like My Cousin Vinny.
I think of thrillers and even movies that are not my type.
I remember being dragged to the movie Working Girl.
But these were actually good movies.
They had a plot. They had interesting characters.
You often identified with the hero or the heroine who was typically an everyman of some sort struggling to make it.
And then it seemed that there was a turn around the year 2000, so that now if I go to movies and I don't go that often, I feel like I'm in a world I don't really recognize.
And I don't think it's because the world around me is familiar, but the world of Hollywood is different.
So I'm trying to trace if there's a way to chart what happened in Hollywood.
You know, I don't know, but I do know that films have taken a slight stance in the past.
You could sort of infer what they were trying to get at, but now it is pronounced and profound.
Some films, current films, they're planting their flag on the moon, and there's no north or south.
It's we're going 76 degrees north, you know, right?
So and I don't know if it's intentional.
I do know that I mean, I still love movies, but there are some movies that I see that make me completely roll my eyes nowadays.
But there's still.
My favorite film of the year is Top Gun.
I took my boys to see it.
And yes, you have to suspend your disbelief.
And there are things that are wholly unbelievable.
But my God, I loved that movie.
And me and my boys, and my wife too.
We've seen it in the theater two times.
So there's still good movies out there.
There's still wonderful stories to tell.
But yeah, it is absolutely taking a turn for platform, for preaching, and it does tend to be all directed in a certain way.
Let's take a pause when we come back.
Let's talk more about movies and specifically about the film we're here to talk about, Nefarious.
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Use discount code AMERICA. I'm back with actor Sean Patrick Flannery.
He's been in over 100 movies and TV shows.
We're here to talk about the film that's called Nefarious.
And I should tell you, the website is just nefarious-tickets.com.
So N-E-F-A-R-I-O-U-S, nefarious-tickets.com.
The movie opens April 14th, and it's a movie that's well worth seeing.
You've done a bunch of stuff in Hollywood, and then along comes this project, Nefarious.
How were you introduced to it, and what interested you about it?
I did a film in 2004 called The Insatiable, and I did it with Chuck and Kerry, the writers-directors of Nefarious.
And they were two of my favorite people.
We didn't talk religion, politics.
I just knew I really, really, really liked them.
And I told them at the culmination of the film, I said, guys, I would do a Froot Loops commercial with y'all.
And no joke, a year and a half ago, they called me and they said, Sean, we have a Froot Loops commercial.
They remembered. They remembered it.
And I said, put me in, coach.
And they sent me the script.
And I told them, even before reading it, I said, did you guys write it?
And they said, yeah. I said, yeah. I'll do it.
And they said, just read it, read it, read it, and let us know.
I read it, and I sent them an email back.
I said, I'm in. When do we start?
They called me on the phone. They said, we have a really important question when I ask you, though.
What role would you like to play?
And I thought it was kind of clear.
So then I was like, well, I said, well, I... Me, I'd like to play Nefarious.
And they're like, thank God. Okay.
I was like, oh, okay.
All right. Let's go.
There are two key roles, right?
There's the psychiatrist, who is...
Jordan Belfi played the psychiatrist.
Jordan Belfi played that role.
And then there is the...
The murderer, who says...
The murderer has to be certified as sane in order to be executed.
That's the kind of setup, the premise of the film.
And the murderer says, I didn't do it, in effect.
A demon did it, or a demon made me do it, either way.
And so suddenly you're introduced to this remarkable defense...
It's not the insanity defense.
It's not the, I did it because I'm stealing to save my family.
It's that another person or being took a hold of me and compelled me to do that.
I mean, it's a fascinating premise because we're used to, you know, I'm used to The Exorcist and, of course, what's the series the more recent about possession?
You know, the...
The couple that goes and saves people.
Oh, right, right, yes. Anyway, there's been a bunch of possession movies, but this is possession in a very different context.
I think that's the freshness of the idea.
And the framework of the film is extremely simple.
It's a good deal of it.
It's two guys in a room, although there are a number of other beautifully shot scenes.
Did the plot kind of grab you?
Did you think that this is a...
This is something that will get people thinking?
I absolutely thought it will spur thought.
No question about that.
But really, in 30 years in the industry, it truly is.
There's an adage, you know, it ain't going to be on the stage if it ain't on the page.
And Chuck and Carrie are phenomenal writers.
When I say that I've done 30 years in this industry and I've changed a lot of my dialogue and rewritten stuff...
I think I changed two syllables in Nefarious.
And that's not to say that it warranted it, not to say that I'm a great writer or anything else.
When I read this, what comes out of my mouth in the film came out of their pen.
I found every scene to be engaging, perfectly fine-tuned crafting.
It really makes the job as an actor easy.
When it's that well-written, you know, I always consider a well-written script is an instruction manual for designing a character.
When people ask, well, what was your preparation for Nefarious?
It was reading the script.
Because it is, like a Bible is for life, it is the instruction manual.
If you follow it, you're hard-pressed to put a foot wrong.
And I Gave my best shot.
I'm probably sure I put a couple feet wrong, but it was a great instruction manual.
I mean, people have probably...
You guys have probably seen God's Not Dead.
You might have seen Unplanned.
So this is Chuck Solomon and...
Kerry Solomon and Chuck Konzelman's work.
And it seems like they have a...
I wouldn't say a recipe, but let's take, you know, let's take God's not dead.
Again, you've got just a very intriguing premise.
You've got a professor who's doing atheist diatribes in the classroom.
The student challenges the professor.
The professor is like, well, you prove to me that God exists.
And then the plot takes off from there.
And even with Unplanned, what struck me about Unplanned is I knew it was the Abby Johnson story, but it was so well told.
And that I realized that watching this kind of film, I've seen probably three or four other pro-life films, but it was made so effectively that you could actually see the transformation of the lead character effectively.
And then here again in Nefarious, So much of our criminal justice system is based on moral responsibility, right?
I mean, this is why if somebody is insane, they can't be executed because they're not conscious of what they're doing.
How can they be responsible? And so nefarious takes that exact same theme But in a little different context, not so much I'm not responsible, but somebody else is responsible.
Nefarious did it. And that alone, I think, is kind of a gripping premise in this movie.
And I want to commend you. Both of you, you and Belfi, did an amazing, totally convincing job.
Debbie and I were riveted from start to finish.
And then a powerful thing about a film is also the climax.
And this film has an unexpected, just a shattering, wonderful climax.
So that you leave and you're a little speechless, I think, at the end of the film.
Let's take a pause when we come back more with Sean Patrick Flannery about his career and about Nefarious.
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I'm back with actor Sean Patrick Flannery.
We're talking about the film called Nefarious.
The website is nefarioustickets.com.
Nefarious, N-E-F-A-R-I-O-U-S, nefarioustickets.com.
By the way, you can follow it on Twitter, the film at nefariousmovie underscore, and Instagram at nefariousmovie.
Let's talk about how this film develops because you have...
Well, the psychiatrist, as I take it, is kind of a liberal.
By that I mean he's kind of a nice guy.
He's earnest. He's obviously really well-educated.
He is totally secular in the sense that, for him, there are human beings and there are crimes.
And if you didn't do it, Some society made you do it, or your circumstances made you do it, and he's completely unprepared for a third possibility, which is the presence of a supernatural force, in this case an evil force, in the world.
What did you have to do to...
I mean, I remember thinking back, and I might even have seen an interview with Linda Blair after The Exorcist, where she was talking about how it kind of transformed her in the sense that this is not an easy thing to do, and you in the movie are going back and forth.
Between the human character and the demon called Nefarious.
How is that as an actor to pull off?
Well, I've heard all the stories.
I've seen all the interviews of actors that took on what I consider heavy lifting roles.
I don't want to, you know, pull the curtain back and show you that the wizard is two inches tall and weak and feeble.
But truth be told, my research takes place between fade in and fade out.
And at the core of who I am, never wavered.
I don't take any of the character home with me.
It exists between action and cut.
And on cut, I'm thinking, you know what?
I passed this pizza restaurant.
They have a great margarita pizza.
Oh, interesting.
We're ready to go again. Action.
Cut. So anyway, let's get extra basil on that pizza.
But that's the only way that I operate.
I don't take anything home with me.
I have strong convictions on who I am.
And to me, You know, you hear all these stories about, you know, I was channeling this or I was...
It's made-believe.
When the script is that well-written, I did my best to design a character that people believed.
But it doesn't mean that any part of it was me or I lost a part of my soul in playing an evil character.
So you're saying you're not... I mean, I've heard about method acting and the idea of method acting is that at least temporarily...
You become that person.
And I know that there are actors, I think Dustin Hoffman once talked about this, the fact that if he's playing a role, and it's an unusual role, it's very different than him, then for many days around the shooting, he, quote, becomes that person.
He walks like that guy, he talks like that guy.
He's, in a sense, trying to I mean, you know how people today talk about, I identify with this, I identify...
He's trying to identify with the character completely and almost becomes another person, at least for a duration of time.
But you must be...
You're saying you're a compartmentalizer.
You're able to say, for the duration of the shooting, I'm nefarious, and then I can pivot back, and now I'm this other guy, and then when it's cut, I'm Sean Patrick Kleiner again.
Yeah. Yeah, if I'm being incredibly honest and candid, I think that story is complete bullshit.
Really? Yeah. I mean, look, it's like an article of clothing.
When you take it off, it's not like, where's my phantom jacket?
I feel like I'm still wearing a jacket.
No, you don't have the jacket on.
You know you don't have the jacket on. Stop it.
We're eating ice cream now. We're at a restaurant.
Let's stop acting like I was in such turmoil that I brought this character.
Shut up. Just stop.
You know, I think, look, I've had real jobs in my life.
When I was eight years old, I had my first paper route because you had to be 13.
I went, Tommy McNamara knocked on his door.
He was 13. I said, hey, if you sign up for a paper route, I'll throw it and I'll give you 20%.
I wanted a purple Nash skateboard.
So I had a paper route. Did it for five years until I could really officially have it in my name at 13.
I worked at Church's Fried Chicken, changed the deep fat fryer, worked for Atlas Fan Lines, I moved pianos.
I actually dug ditches.
I put culverts under driveways.
I know what real work is.
This is not real work.
This is the easiest thing I have ever done in my life.
I am grateful that I don't have to get a real job.
I hope it continues.
I hope I am always gainfully employed in this.
I don't take it for granted.
See, I also think of this slightly differently than you do, and that is that in every field, there's a certain amount of make-believe and acting.
And what I mean is, let's say you're a lawyer.
You stand up in front of the court, your honor, you know, and then you speak in legal language, objection sustained, and so on, and then you start throwing in some Latin phrases and so on.
So that's a performance. Mm-hmm.
That's not all that different than what an actor does.
Except you don't go home and continue in that fashion.
You recognize that I'm a lawyer.
I did that at work. You don't tell your wife, here's the catch-up.
States Exhibit A. You're like, whoa, sorry.
I was back in court for a minute.
That never happens. Right.
No doctor is at the dinner table who goes, give me the scalpel.
No, he goes, give me the steak knife.
You don't mistake the fact that it's a ribeye and not an aorta.
Right. I don't know.
I don't get it. I hear those stories all the time.
And yet it's the magic of films that, I mean, I think the remarkable thing about films is that an audience goes, it's in a theater, and for a whole 90 minutes or two hours, they really believe that that world is one that they are inhabiting.
Because if they didn't, they'd walk out to you.
So it has to, and it takes great skill, I would say, as a writer, that's, you know, kudos to Solomon and Konzelman, but then also as the actors, and then, of course, the team that kind of puts the whole thing together.
So it's, and this is, I mean, there are movies and there are movies, and this is a very captivating movie.
I guess if we had to put it into a category, we'd call it a supernatural thriller.
Would you agree with that? Was that about an accurate description of it?
And I think what's cool is it'll leave you just, you know, I think deeply moved, but it will also leave you thinking, thinking in very fundamental ways about justice and about the supernatural.
The website is nefarioustickets.com, N-E-F-A-R-I-O-U-S, nefarioustickets.com.
The movie's Nefarious. And our guest has been Sean Patrick Flannery.
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I want to conclude my discussion of scientific laws and miracles.
And I'll do it by saying that scientific laws give us the known laws of nature, but these known laws are just laws as far as we know them.
Take a simple example.
Can a dead person come back to life?
Now we would answer to this question, no.
And this has been the answer, by and large, that human beings have given since the dawn of time.
But think about it this way.
Is this an answer that we can say with complete certainty will apply in the future?
Is it possible in future, leave aside miracles, that simply through advances in medical technology, someone can be pronounced clinically dead, maybe even brain dead, And be revived.
No one can say that a hundred years from now or a thousand years from now, this will be impossible.
And think about it. If it's possible in the future, that means it's possible now.
We may not have the technology to do it, but it's not impossible.
And moreover, it has always been possible.
It's just that we didn't know it was possible.
We thought that it was outside the realm of possibility, but that was a reflection of our limited knowledge, not what the actual limits of possibility are.
Now, miracles can be looked at as deviations from the known laws of nature, but they can also be viewed as suspensions of actual laws.
So I've denied that we know what the laws of nature are, but let's say that there are laws of nature and the laws of nature are clear.
What is to say that God can't violate those laws?
If there is a God, let's start with that premise.
If there is a God, that God made those laws.
That God devised nature in this way.
So is it impossible for such a God who is the architect of To somehow be constrained by those laws, cannot operate outside of those laws.
These are laws that God himself chose and put into effect.
Think of God as the author of a novel, and the novel is a story.
Let's call it the story of mankind.
And the story operates within an environment which the novelist creates, and the environment is lawful.
By lawful, I mean it is predictable.
It is such that the characters in the novel can operate.
They have Just as we do.
They have seasons. It's morning and evening.
The years pass and time passes in the normal fashion.
People live and die. They have children and so on.
But this novel is the creation of the author.
It is Hamlet, created, let's say, by Shakespeare.
So here's the question. Is Shakespeare somehow bound by the laws that operate in Hamlet?
So because there is a ghost in Hamlet, Shakespeare has no ability to alter the plot, no ability to intervene in the plot, no ability to change the plot or change the ending.
Remember, with miracles, we aren't even saying That God is continuously intervening in nature.
Because after all, if God was continuously intervening, then nature would not have any regular pattern at all.
Things would constantly be happening in a kind of random or mysterious way.
We'd have to attribute it to the will or whim of God.
And we would not be able to live our lives by counting on the sun to rise again tomorrow and to start getting warmer as we move towards summer and so on.
But... Given that a miracle is a periodic, in fact, by definition, an extremely rare intervention into nature by the author of nature himself, who's to say that there's something impossible about that?
In fact, not only is there nothing impossible about that, it seems to be, in a way, I should say the most natural thing in the world, or maybe I should say the most supernatural thing in the world, the author of a creative work, the creator of a work, always has sovereignty over that work.
So, now you might say, well, miracles disrupt the logic of the story.
They cause a kind of break or disruption.
And while that's true, that's what miracles are supposed to do.
The point of a miracle is to do something startling that causes humans, or in some cases just one particular human, to see the world in a different light, to recognize that God is in fact Present to recognize, in a sense, that the natural world is not the only world there is.
If God made the universe, He also made the laws of nature, and He can alter them on occasion if He chooses to.
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